Arch in Vegas, Trade Deals, and Uber Bus

If you plan on coming to Vegas - message us! We have a couple of industry passes left for clients and are hosting an event on the Tuesday alongside Mark Moss!

This Week in Crypto

BTC ETF flows continued to tick along this week. The drive back up to $104,000 has been largely spot driven buying, owing to continued inflows here and from corporate treasuries. Funding and exuberance in derivatives has remained minimal (highly positive for bulls).

• Demand from corporate treasuries has outstripped new coins 3:1 (see graphic) and tops $16B.

ETH has (for once) caught some much needed respite recently, with ETHBTC rallying 45% from the bottom. Inflows on the ETF front remain poor though, with YTD net outflows of around $140M (compared to the $6.1B of inflows for corn).

• In our view ETH may provide some short term trading opportunities owing to funds rebalancing and near term short squeezes, but still lacks any meaningful or compelling narrative relative to BTC or even SOL.

Elsewhere, lot’s of going on’s in the public markets this week:

• Coinbase joined the S&P500! Price is up >30% on the news.

  • Rumours are swirling as $MSTR to follow in the next few months.

• $GLXY launches on the NASDAQ today

• David Bailey’s Nakamoto Holdings raises $710M and announced a merger with KindlyMD to launch a public Bitcoin treasury strategy.

• And, I thought I’d include this one here, because it made me chuckle:

On the topic of companies and bitcoin, Arch partnered with Theya this week to increase access to Bitcoin backed loans for businesses! Theya provide multi-sig custody to individuals and businesses worldwide, and now their clients have access to liquidity through Arch.

This Week in TradFi

Wall Street indexes were relatively mixed this week, with gains early on and a more lackluster mid-week.

• A truce in the U.S. China trade war set off a relief rally in stocks on Monday, increasing the dollar as well. The U.S. and China mutually agreed to a 90-day pause on tariffs, leaving U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods at 30% and Chinese tariffs on U.S. goods at 10%. 

  • As a result, the S&P rose 3.3%, and Nasdaq jumped over 4%. 

  • Positive feelings and optimism continued in the markets as the Administration secured a $600B commitment from the Saudis to invest in the United States.

• Wall Street continued to make moderate gains on Tuesday, fueled by the consumer prices report. U.S. consumer prices rebounded moderately in April, with declining food costs partially offsetting increasing rent costs. This indicates that price pressures were cooling before Trump’s tariff policies - and does not change economists’ views that the Fed should continue to pause rate cuts until late summer.

• This Monday/Tuesday surge helped bring the S&P back into positive territory YTD - the first time since February. 

• Wednesday and Thursday were relatively lackluster for Wall Street’s main indexes, but we’re poised to see gains today - as we wait for a vote on President Trump’s tax legislation. 

• Next week we’ll be waiting for a batch of U.S. retail earnings reports, with results coming in from Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, and more. 

On the international front:

• Canadian housing starts rose 30% in April compared to March, a much bigger increase than expected. 

• UK stocks are set to end the week higher, fueled by trade optimism from the U.S.-China truce this week and the U.S.-UK deal last week. As of this morning, the FTSE 100 was up 0.3% and the FTMC was up 0.4%.

• Oil prices rose slightly today, heading for their second consecutive weekly gain. Brent crude futures were up 29 cents, and U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up 27 cents.

• Hong Kong’s economy expanded 3.1% in Q1 vs. a year earlier, supported by an increase in exports and growth in overall investment expenditure. 

• And Japan’s economy shrank for the first time in a year and at a faster pace than expected. Real GDP contracted at an annualized rate of 0.7% in Q1, much higher than the predicted 0.2% drop. The decline was driven by stagnant private consumption and falling exports - indicating the economy was struggling with decreased overseas demand even before Trump’s tariff announcements. 

This Week in Tech

Uber is introducing cheap, fixed-route rides in major U.S. cities designed for commuters. 

• Starting Wednesday, riders in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco can save 50% off the price of an UberX trip by booking with the new “Route Share” feature.

• The shuttles will drive between pre-set stops every 20 minutes. 

• Riders can book a seat up to 10 minutes before pick-up, and the app will direct them from their location to the corner where they’ll be picked up. 

• Sound familiar? Yeah, for us too. This is literally just a bus.

Notion has rolled out an AI-powered meeting note taking feature to transcribe meetings and summarize talking points. 

• The feature will take notes as the meeting is going on. Once you indicate the meeting is over, the tool will generate an AI summary. You can also choose a specific formatting option, such as sales call, standup, or team meeting. 

As usual, below are some fundraising announcements, M&A, and tech personnel changes that caught our eye:

• AI note taking app Granola has raised a $43M Series B at a $250M valuation. 

• Sales automation startup Clay authorized an employee tender offer, valuing the company at $1.5B. Sequoia has agreed to purchase up to $20M in employee stock.

• Databricks is acquiring Neon, a startup building an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres, for around $1B. 

• Microsoft is laying off 3% of its workforce, around 6,500 employees. 

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto. We also offer access to bank-grade custody, trading and staking services, powered by BitGo.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.